SWIRLING EVIL AND DEEPER TRUTHS

This quote from N. Gordon Crosby came across my email this morning, one of three inspirational messages I receive each day and usually don’t get around to reading because when I turn on my computer, I’m assaulted by “events, circumstances, problems, and worries” and rarely take the time for “the deeps.”

This week I’m overwhelmed, trying to prepare a sermon for Sunday, get ready to hit the road for seven weeks, and deal with doctor’s appointments for my bad hip and my two elderly cats with cancer.

Also, my country is stealing thousands of children from their parents, slapping numbers on them, and locking them in cages where nobody is allowed to hold them or comfort them.

I just read several new polls saying that most Americans don’t care for this. Well, bully for them. The same polls show that 55% of self-identified Republicans and 40% of white people think this is just fine.

It is hard to remember the deeper truths when our nation is being overwhelmed with evil.

It is hard to remember that God works all things for good. That the moral arc of the universe eventually bends towards justice, as Dr. King said. That “All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well,” as the fourteenth-century mystic Julian of Norwich said.

God is not working fast enough for my tastes. Neither is Robert Mueller.

This is from a Daily Kos member who calls himself HarpBoyAK, a “long-time Juneau, Alaska political and environmental activist.”

My community was incensed that their good citizens of Japanese ancestry were being deported. They implored the Federal Government to let their beloved laundry owner and workers, their favorite cafe owner and workers, and many other Japanese workers stay. They knew these good, honest, hardworking people, and did not want them to leave.

So much so that when the valedictorian of the Juneau High School class of 1942 (my uncle’s class) held their commencement, the school painted one of the wooden folding chairs black and put it in John Tanaka’s place in the front row of the class (he had been awarded his diploma 2 months earlier when his family was sent to Minadoka, Idaho in early March).

John Tanaka went on to enlist in the 442nd Regiment and fought in the Italian campaign where the “Go For Broke” unit had one of WWII’s highest casualty rates. Unlike many other communities on the West Coast, Alaska’s capital city took care to preserve the properties and businesses of our fellow citizens and helped them get back on their feet when they returned after the war. John worked summers in his family’s restaurant while he attended college and medical school.

2 years ago, we dedicated a bronze copy of that folding chair placed in the park next door to that school as a memorial to those who were deported, and to remind us that it should never happen again.

Never again will we allow people to be imprisoned for who they are. Never Again. NEVER AGAIN.

Another reader of my Daily Kos blog pointed out that calling these “internment camps” is “whitewashing” what our country did. They were concentration camps, built with the intention of concentrating the “undesirables” in one place. Hence the quotation marks.

And in case you missed it, the trump people are already citing these concentration camps as a legal precedent for their planned incarceration of immigrants (despite the fact that President Reagan issued an official apology for our World War II actions and paid each victim $20,000). The man currently occupying the Oval Office says he may or may not have supported the Japanese camps.